Two Star Trek series crossed paths recently over on Paramount+, the season finale of Star Trek: Picard and the series debut of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
Within the space of one night, Star Trek left me with a lot of frustration and hopeful and excited about the future.
Let's get the negative out of the way first.
Star Trek: Picard, what the hell, man?
OK, let's concede there is the framework for a good story here.
Picard and his gang from season 1 are in the crosshairs of time travel shenanigans. Someone fucked up something in the past and the Federation is now the fascist Confederation where the only good alien is a dead alien.
Toss in a Picard connection: the person at the center of the altered historical event is Jean-Luc's ancestor, astronaut Renee Picard. OK, we have some personal stakes.
And add Q to the mix and now we have some cosmic level stakes and we're off to the races for what I imagine would make for a very effective two, maybe three part adventure maybe?
Or we can drag this out over 10 episodes and I do mean "drrrrraaaaaaaggggg" it out.
We spend all of episode 1 of establishing a status quo that is immediately upended by the end of the episode.
Later, rinse, repeat.
We spend all of episode 2 of establishing a status quo that is immediately upended by the end of the episode.
When Picard and the intrepid crew of the La Sirena make it back in time to 2024 in episode 3, we establish a pattern that will help keep our cast busy, busy, busy chasing their tails until the season finale when Q snaps everyone back to episode 1 and quite frankly I've lost the will to live.
Yeah, there's some cool fan boy shit to squee over.
The trophy skulls in "General" Picard's library connect to Deep Space Nine.
The time travel method used to get back to 2024 is the slingshot effect used by Captain Kirk's Enterprise in the original series and again in The Voyage Home.
Chris Rios telling the female doctor, "I'm from Chile. I only work in outer space" calls back to Kirk's response to Gillian's "Are you from outer space?" in The Voyage Home.
Renee Picard's alien watcher is connected to Gary Seven who was introduced in the TOS episode "Assignment Earth".
The alien beings Gary worked for are connected to the Travellers. We met a Traveller in Star Trek: The Next Generation who buggered off with Wesley Crusher in season 7 of TNG and...
OMG!!!! Wesley Crusher shows up!
And he's a Traveller!!!!!
And it's so frickin' COOL!!!!
I know that TNG fans spent an inordinate amount of time hating on Wesley Crusher so to get excited about Wesley Crusher returning seems a bit hypcritical.
But....
Oh fuck it! It's so frickin' COOL!!!!
But damn this season was filled with such padding.
As if having a Picard ancestor was enough of a personal stake, we spend a lot of time in Picard's head as a long buried trauma starts to poke at him.
When Jean-Luc Picard was a child, his mother was mentally ill and subsequently killed herself.
OK, I'm not saying a TV show cannot have a serious conversation on the perils of mental illness and the desperate consequences that can result if not properly treated.
But shoving this into Picard's back story contradicts so much we know about the character of Jean-Luc Picard. And this back story is heavy handed and terribly dated. The story of Jean-Luc's mother's struggle with mental illness reads like some well intentioned but poorly researched tripe someone would've written in the 1970's or something.
Most damning of all, Picard's family history with the perils of mental illness and the desperate consequences that can result if not properly treated really doesn't impact Picard's character in the past or going forward. This story is there to make an otherwise respectable 2 or 3 part episode fill out a 10 episode season.
OK, let's end the Picard section of this post with some positives.
Alison Pill as Agnes Jurati rocks out loud as she merges with the Borg Queen. The evolution of Agnes to a different kind of Borg Queen is an acting tour de force.
Brent Spiner (formerly Data) is a complete and total bastard as Dr. Adam Soong in 2024.
Seven and Raffi finally get an onscreen kiss. Too long to get so little but hell, I'm grasping for all the positive straws I can.
Sigh!
Let's move on to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
For so long, it seemed Star Trek was stuck in the past with prequels like Enterprise and the first 2 seasons of Discovery and it annoyed me to no end that Star Trek was not moving forward. With that in mind, you might think I wouldn't be on board with one more damn prequel.
Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, and Rebecca Romijn made me change my mind about that.
Anson Mount as Capt. Christopher Pike filling in as captain of the Discovery just.... I can't think of another way to say this so I will just say it.... charmed the hell out of me. Personable and witty but still able to channel that classic Starfleet Captain gravitas, Pike was a most impressive captain and when his time on Discover was over, I didn't want to let this captain go.
Likewise Ethan Peck absolutely nailed his turn as Spock, effectively channeling Leonard Nimoy but establishing a unique take as well. And in her brief appearances as Pike's Number One, Rebecca Romijn veritably demanded we have more time with her.
And a lot of other people felt that way so thus begat Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
SNW gives us an Enterprise that is sleek and modern yet also retro. And with a classic mission, the one William Shatner and Patrick Stewart intoned over the opening of TOS and TNG and now here by Anson Mount: to seek out new life, new life and strange new worlds, to boldy go where no one has gone before.
As Uhura says in response to Pike's recitation of their mission, "Cool!"
In addition to Uhura, we also have another connection to TOS, nurse Christine Chapel. And we have a Kirk on the Enterprise but not James T. Nope, it's Jim Kirk's older brother Sam who serves as a life sciences office.
While Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is more episodic in design from other Paramount+ Star Trek series, there is still some continuity at least in terms of character development. Pike's flash forward in Discovery Season 2 where he sees his fate of being devastated by a radiation explosion (as shown in the TOS two parter, "The Menagerie") is still messing with Pike's head a bit.
But the main thing we get from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is that it treks among the stars and is having fun doing it.
OK, that is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase.
Next week, we look at the season finale of Young Sheldon and what turned out to be the series finale of Naomi.
Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.
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